Spinach Gnocchi from Vetri in Philadelphia, Pa.
Ultra-high-end restaurants, of the sort where the chef uses tweezers to place single sprigs of manicured parsley on your plate, have long loved the tasting menu, that multicourse onslaught of tiny plates. It’s not surprising — given how hard it is to produce that kind of food and how expensive the ingredients are — that it costs a fortune to serve those kinds of dishes à la carte. That’s why many restaurants, like New York City’s Eleven Madison Park and wd-50, have joined NEXT in Chicago and Vetri in Philadelphia in dispensing with menus entirely and feeding passive diners like so many Kobe calves.